Re: [MLUG - DISCUSSION] More on Pascal's wager [was: Famous atheistchanges his mind]

[Mike Miller <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

On Fri, 7 Jan 2005, Stephen Montgomery-Smith wrote:

> none of us can rule out the possibility that there is some greater force 
> than ourselves. Thus we may as well perform the experiment where we 
> humbly seek whether this greater power exists, perhaps by calling out 
> within our heart hoping that this greater power is listening.  Clearly 
> this is a personal experiment, whose results cannot be replicated in the 
> "scientific" manner, nevertheless we see that enough other people claim 
> to have been successful, that we may as well try it out.

My sister has a list of experiences of this kind.  Once, when her car 
wouldn't start, she prayed for help, then turned the key and the car 
started.  She then showed the car to a religious mechanic friend of hers 
and he told her that it should have been impossible for the car to have 
started based on his impressions of the car's mechanical problems.  This 
kind of story has no effect on me.  People see what they want to see and 
believe what they want to believe.  Their memories are distorted by their 
wishes.  They willingly suspend their critical faculties so that they can 
enjoy the pleasure of sharing an inspiring story.


> Against Pascal's wager - in of itself it seems a very impersonal 
> approach to a diety, if he exists.  Many people will claim that their 
> experience of getting to know God is very much like a love affair, and 
> that very powerful feelings are generated within oneself.  I should 
> hasten to add that I am not talking about the sexual side of love, but 
> those deeper feelings that one might have for a spouse that one has been 
> with for many years, or that one might have for ones child or parent, or 
> for a very dear friend that one has known for many years. It is because 
> of this very powerful sense of loving and being loved by God that many 
> who believe are unable to deny their God, even when faced with the lack 
> of scientific peer reviewed evidence for him.

I'm sure you are right.  There are also very powerful social forces at 
work.  It would be very difficult for a member of a religious group to 
tell the other members that he has doubts about their belief system.  He 
would be asking them to give up the cherished sense of love that they 
experience through their belief in God.  So he'll just keep his mouth 
shut.

Mike
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